12 February 2007

TV Dinner Party

Last Saturday night, I hosted a very special dinner party. The idea was to re-create the golden days of TV Dinners, in the era of aluminum trays.

Regular Expo Lounge visitors already know how much I used to love eating TV Dinners as a child, with my mom. This made the TV Dinner Party concept just perfect for an evening with my mother and her new guy...

Deluxe TV Dinners, à la Jason...

I decided to make Martha Stewart's Perfect Fried Chicken, a recipe which I'll start 2 nights prior to a party. Along with that, I made the traditional TV Dinner mashed potatoes (full of butter and cream), but with a twist: I added sautéed leeks for flavor. And no Swanson replica would be complete without yellow corn in a luscious butter sauce.

All of this was served in rectangular aluminum trays, of course.

The soundtrack for the evening consisted of Music for TV Dinners, mixed with actual vintage TV themes: I Love Lucy, Batman, Charlie's Angels, etc.

No TV Dinner Party would be complete without watching an actual TV show. So after dinner, we sat down to The Doomsday Machine, a classic episode of the original Star Trek (which is my mom's favorite show).

For dessert, I asked my sister to bake brownies, as I recall TV dinners often including them. The concoction she came up with was decadent beyond belief: two layers of dark chocolate fudge that surrounded a hypnotic coconut macaroon center. After an indulgent second helping of this sweet cement, I settled back into my chair, in a sugary delirium.

11 Comments:

Thanks so much Jason and P.L.for the really great dinner party. We both enjoyed it very much, and are still giggling. Your sister's brownie dessert was amazing! The food was just delicious. And of course, Star Trek was the perfect accompaniment.

I'm totally going to try the Martha recipe (or as we call her at the PuckPad®, Marfa). The hubby makes fried chicken sometimes; even though he's from the U.S. South and you'd think he'd do a good job, it's always bland.